the antidote for ward division: secession

There's been a furor yesterday and today in Ward 15 of the City of Cleveland about a tripartite division of what is one of the Cleveland area's most intrinsically valuable suburbs, the park neighborhood from which the beautiful Cleveland Zoo sprang. Part would go to Joe Santiago to the north, part would go to Joe Cimperman to the east, and another part would join Tony Brancatelli, connecting by jumping over Newburg Heights.

I'm quite tired of arguing over basic common-sense issues with the city government here in Cleveland. It takes a lot of time and energy that could be way better spent.

I am proposing quite simply that we in Ward 15 secede, become the Village of Brooklyn Centre once more, lower our overhead, and take back our governance. This should take the population of the City of Cleveland down to less than 400,000 as of the next census, and perhaps that will qualify them for some sort of emergency-aid intervention as they waddle up to the DC trough.

We in Brooklyn Centre already have the fire station, the police station, two libraries, the hospital, two cemeteries, a lovely park adjacent to the Zoo, a number of churches, good basic housing stock, and great freeway access and transit routes. What we need now is to be freed from stupidity and the abusive actions of deeply conflicted politicians, like Marty Sweeney and Kevin Kelley. We can't afford them.

If you're wondering what it's like to live in Cleveland and be subject to the inept ministrations of these two disgraces to my Irish heritage, try to imagine what it would be like to be walked by your dog.

2 years later, & now comes the full disclosure: "Med mart bonds cost millions more with private company"

We didn't talk about this during the Put It On The Ballot campaign nearly two years ago, and the sales tax increases sailed through in time to help the county balance the books at the end of 2007. We have the Greater Cleveland Partnership with Nancy Lesic and her airplane, Fred Nance and his firm SSD, and pre-FBI-investigation county commissioners for that one.

Now, after having tried to collect his firm's fees from the county instead of from the GCP, Vornado, or the Kennedy family's company, here's Fred again, innumerate as ever, claiming that the $75,000,000 premium we will be paying is "well worth it."

We are paying for some really bad help here. Is it time to pull the plug on this before it gets worse?

Med mart bonds cost millions more with private company - Metro - cleveland.com

FW: About Cleveland: How to Get Tickets for the Rock Hall Ceremony

Sandy Mitchell sent us this email about how to personally benefit from the $1,000,000.00 our elected help at Cleveland City Council gave the Rock Hall to have the dinner in Cleveland this year. How much is that a plate?

If you have any ideas about how we can get our money back, so that the city and the schools and the library can pay their bills to people who have already done work for them, post them here.

I understand that our local government entities are stiffing more businesspeople than usual, and for more protracted periods. If my information is inaccurate, then all the entities have to do is show us their payables, and I'll stand corrected.

From: Sandy Mitchell - About.com Cleveland Guide [mailto:cleveland.guide@about.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 3:30 PM
To: taferris-AT-GMAIL.COM
Subject: About Cleveland: How to Get Tickets for the Rock Hall Ceremony

Cleveland Error! Filename not specified. In the Spotlight More Topics Skating at the "Q" from Sandy Mitchell For the first time in the 24 year history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (it predates the museum), a limited number of tickets will be offered to the general public. What's more: the ceremony will be held for the first time in Cleveland, not New York City. If you're eager to see the event first-hand, we have the details on how to get tickets. See below. Error! Filename not specified. In the Spotlight How to Get Tickets for the Rock Hall Induction Ceremony A limited number of tickets are being made available to the public for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at Public Hall on April 4. Call-in sales for museum members are January 22 and 23, with walk-up sales for non-members are January 24. More Topics Moondog Coronation Ball Why Cleveland is the Home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Jeff Beck Metallica Little Anthony and the Imperials About the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Cleveland's most popular attraction--the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame--sits at the edge of North Coast Harbor in downtown Cleveland. I've visited more than a dozen times and always find something new and exciting. Be sure to take in the special exhibits on the top floors. They are easy to miss, but always worthwhile. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2009 Inductees The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2009 inductees. The 600-member Rock Hall selection committee has chosen: Jeff Beck, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Metallica,...read more Cleveland Ads Cleveland Wedding Ohio Weddings Buy Tickets Rock & Roll Rock Columbus, OH U.S. / Canadian Parks Classic Rock Pittsburgh, PA Search About Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.

this coming Wednesday at noon at the City Club: Jim Rokakis

The City Club - Speakers > Speaker Detail -- Our Wednesday is realigning as we plan to go see Cuyahoga County Treasurer and former Ward 15 Councilman Jim Rokakis speak at the City Club at noon. Here's the blurb from the link:

Speakers > Jim Rokakis

Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:00 PM

Jim Rokakis
Cuyahoga County Treasurer

Reservation

Jim Rokakis will discuss a proposed Ohio bill to land bank foreclosed properties. Rokakis took office as county treasurer in March 1997 after serving for more than 19 years on Cleveland City Council, the last seven as chairman of the finance committee. He has brought sweeping reform to the treasurer's office, overhauling county property tax collection system by instituting more efficient collection and disbursement of tax revenue. Rokakis has significantly improved the county’s investment function and was recognized as having the best-performing portfolio among Ohio County Treasurer’s. Rokakis also revolutionized the way Ohio counties collect delinquent property taxes by working successfully to pass House Bill 371 that allows county treasurers in Ohio’s largest counties to sell their property tax liens to private entities. Additionally, he spearheaded House Bill 294, which streamlines the foreclosure process for abandoned properties and was instrumental in creating Cuyahoga County’s “Don’t Borrow Trouble” foreclosure prevention program. Rokakis developed nationally recognized linked deposit loan programs that help revitalize the county’s housing stock and reduce urban sprawl. Rokakis has been recognized by local and national organizations for his efforts in strengthening neighborhoods and communities. In 2007, he received the NeighborWorks America Local Government Service Award and the Leadership in Social Justice Award from Greater Cleveland Community Shares, and was named the County Leader of the Year by American City and County Magazine.

how will this impact Cleveland Clinic?

Anthem to stop paying for preventable errors - cleveland.com -- This is an interesting development: Anthem (Wellpoint) is stopping paying for erroneous procedures, poor care, and slipshod work. I would be curious to know how the larger institutions, like the Cleveland Clinic, will be financially affected by this withholding of payments. Will this eventually have a financial impact things like the plans for a medical mart?

Perhaps the effect will be so severe that they will begin to serve the Medicaid community once more, to make up for the loss of revenue. For those of you who aren't aware, the Cleveland Clinic opted out of serving the poor and less fortunate by opting out of the Medicaid HMOs last month, keeping the ER open to the poor as a token gesture of the Clinic's charitable intent, and thereby technically preserving their nonprofit status.

Another thing I'd really like to know is how much of the income of The Clinic is derived from being paid for poor work, things like operating on the wrong part of the wrong patient, leaving instruments inside people after operations, septic shock for staff and patients alike, urinary tract infections from forgotten catheters, pressure sores, and fractures compliments of the hospital stay?

We say around here we are in the health-care business. Actually, we are in the business of letting people get so sick and unhealthy that they require extraordinary methods to achieve normalcy once again. Is there more you can bill from treating the incredibly sick than you can for keeping people from getting sick? Is a hospital entitled to bill at all when they have in fact caused the problem for which they're billing?

Gretchen Morgensen calls the beast by its name: predatory loan servicing

Borrowers Face Dubious Charges in Foreclosures - New York Times --This is what I've been waiting for. Justice is now about to be served. The plundering of the equity of the American neighborhood can now wind down.

Finally, here is the description of the crux of the foreclosure problem: predatory loan servicing. Gretchen Morgensen delivers just in time. The pacing and timing on this couldn't be better. Everything is coming into alignment. The problem is near solution. The true causes are beginning to be revealed.

The question is now, who will be the one who begins, and presides over, the Spitzerization of the lending/foreclosing industries, and the attorneys who serve them?

I have lots of other questions:

1. Could this be the reason why the majority of foreclosures happened?
2. Could it be the reason that so many could not escape the endless loop, even though they tried?
3. Are these fees able to take the same position as the primary mortgage, and do they take priority over other, junior liens that were already in place at the time the servicer, the lender, and the attorneys who run the mills initiated foreclosure proceedings?
4. What are the rules for handling the money?
5. What are the fiduciary responsibilities?
6. How can we get our money back?
7. How can we begin to quantify the damages, as well?
8. How can we recover damages?
9. Who gets paid back first?
10. How can we prevent this happening again, and who was asleep at the switch?

If you thought asbestos was big for the plaintiffs' bar, just stay tuned on this one.

Here are a few excerpts from Gretchen's article, but read the whole thing. This is huge. Seminal. Long overdue. Invigorating.

. . . Because there is little oversight of foreclosure practices and the fees that are charged, bankruptcy specialists fear that some consumers may be losing their homes unnecessarily or that mortgage servicers, who collect loan payments, are profiting from foreclosures. . . .

. . . On Oct. 9, the Chapter 13 trustee in Pittsburgh asked the court to sanction Countrywide, the nation’s largest loan servicer, saying that the company had lost or destroyed more than $500,000 in checks paid by homeowners in foreclosure from December 2005 to April 2007. The trustee, Ronda J. Winnecour, said in court filings that she was concerned that even as Countrywide misplaced or destroyed the checks, it levied charges on the borrowers, including late fees and legal costs. . . .

Ken Burns: The War

I don't usually watch much television. For some reason, last night we locked onto our local PBS station, Channel 25, and stayed locked on through the second showing. Ken Burns' THE WAR is history dished up as never before as well as a think-tool for dealing with today's state of affairs, in which much of the money and the power seem to have gotten into the wrong hands.

There are two recurrent, simple, powerful themes that reached from then to now and grabbed me:

1. Bad things happen when one group of people thinks it's better than or superior to another group.
2. Worse things, evil things, ugly things, happen when the group that thinks it's superior begins to covet and then confiscate the stuff of the supposedly inferior group.

Here's a synopsis of the episodes and a schedule. Back then, the people had information withheld from them, but they seemed to be trying to come awake. Now, we have imperfect information fed in from all sides, despite our mainstream media's vastly improved capabilities, but people seem not to want to come to grips.

"the neighborhood's the victim"

Mason prosecutes mortgage-fraud schemes in Solon worth $2.6 million - cleveland.com -- Bill Mason strikes a chord that should resonate with all of us, and this idea may form the basis for communities to recover from the lenders, the investment bankers, the brokers, the servicers, the hedge funds, and all others who have made transactional, short-term profits churning our capital and using our legal system against us, as it suits them.

Mason praised Solon police for paying special attention to mortgage fraud, a crime that many police departments are just beginning to understand.

Countywide, the prosecutor's office has so far this year filed 12 cases involving 60 properties, $8.4 million in loans and more than 130 defendants. Mason, who has an assistant prosecutor and three investigators focusing on mortgage fraud and related offenses, promised to aid any cities that bring cases to his attention.

"We want to get the corporations and people who are doing these practices," Mason said. "The neighborhood's the victim."

24 years at 1.87%

As of October 5th, we will have owned this property of ours in Cleveland's Archwood-Denison/Brooklyn Centre neighborhood for 24 years. I track investments for time-weighted and dollar-weighted rates of return. Using data from the county auditor's site, and considering the original purchase price ($32,000) and the cost of our improvements to the property (which have been minimal), and the current market valuation on the website ($59,800), I see that the time-weighted rate of return here has been 1.78% and the dollar-weighted rate of return here has been 1.87% over these past 24 years, since 1983.

Is it any wonder that the latest county commissioners' report, as The Cleveland Equanimous Philosopher (It's The Details That Can't Be Strung Behind An Airplane That You Should Be Worried About) has pointed out, shows a deficit projected for the end of this year? (see pages I-3 and I-10 for starters.)

Apparently, the numbers tell us, this county has been run in such a fashion that our personal investment in the county (our little $32,000 house) has not kept pace with the outside world, and yet we as a county are paying outside-world prices for goods, services, and salaries. This is not sustainable. We need to cut back on what we are spending around here for that nebulous layer of county services. Can you tick off right quickly what things the county does are mission-critical? The roads, and then what?

What we pay to keep a bloated county trundling along seems to be like throwing good money after bad. We've supported them lavishly in the past, and all we have is a growth in our investment here of under 2%. It's time to pull the plug on them. We should not continue to pay top dollar for mediocre results.

Tom brings up an interesting point

Thomas Suddes: Ohio secretary of state is already looking for something to do - cleveland.com: Gloria mentioned to me just now that Tom has brought up an interesting point:

"And State Treasurer Richard Cordray, a Democrat, is offering himself as a
provider of financial advice to Ohioans. It's a mystery how that could be virgin
territory: Ohio is the legal headquarters of five of America's 25 largest banks;
no state boasts more such headquarters. "

Further research from Infoplease fleshes this out, with a quick top 30 using December, 2005 data from the Federal Reserve. The numbers need another six zeroes, so I provided them, but I don't really know if that helps us get our collective head around the magnitude of the situation any better (quadrillion comes after trillion):
1. Bank of America Corp. (Charlotte, N.C.) $1,082,243,000,000
2. J. P. Morgan Chase & Company (Columbus, Ohio) 1,013,985,000,000
3. Citigroup (New York, N.Y.) 706,497,000,000
4. Wachovia Corp. (Charlotte, N.C.) 472,143,000,000
5. Wells Fargo & Company (Sioux Falls, S.D.) 403,258,000,000
6. U.S. BC (Cincinnati, Ohio) 208,867,000,000
7. Suntrust Banks, Inc. (Atlanta, Ga.) 177,231,000,000
8. HSBC North America Inc. (Wilmington, Del.) 150,679,000,000
9. Keybank (Cleveland, Ohio) 88,961,000,000
10. State Street Corp. (Boston, Mass.) 87,888,000,000
11. Bank of New York Company, Inc. (New York, N.Y.) 85,868,000,000
12. PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (Pittsburgh, Pa.) 82,877,000,000
13. Regions Bank (Birmingham, Ala.) 81,074,000,000
14. Branch BKG&TC Corp. (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 80,227,000,000
15. Chase Bank USA (Newark, Del.) 75,052,000,000
16. Countrywide Bank (Alexandria, Va.) 73,116,000,000
17. LaSalle Bank (Chicago, Ill.) $71,061,000,000
18. National City Bank (Cleveland, Ohio) 69,482,000,000
19. Bank of America USA (Phoenix, Ariz.) 62,983,000,000
20. MBNA Corp. (Wilmington, Del.) 58,517,000,000
21. Fifth Third Bancorp (Cincinnati, Ohio) 57,613,000,000
22. North Fork Bank (Mattituck, N.Y.) 57,045,000,000
23. Bank of the West (San Francisco, Calif.) 55,158,000,000
24. Manufacturers and Traders TC (Buffalo, N.Y.) 54,391,000,000
25. Comerica (Detroit, Mich.) 53,577,000,000
26. Amsouth Bancorporation (Birmingham, Ala.) 52,570,000,000
27. Union Bank of Calif. (San Francisco, Calif.) 48,679,000,000
28. Fifth Third Bank (Grand Rapids, Mich.) 47,605,000,000
29. Northern Trust Corp. (Chicago, Ill.) 44,865,000,000
30. Citibank SD (Sioux Falls, S.D.) 44,011,000,000

The final tally: Ohio, 5; New York, 4; North Carolina and Delaware, 3 each. With all we have going on around here, what do you think of that? Are we bank-friendly? Have they helped make us everything we are today? What are your thoughts, or feelings?

a fungible feast

fungible - Definitions from Dictionary.com -- In my email this morning, I got notice that the word for the day is "fungible," which word I heard bandied about by the upper-echelon staff of Cuyahoga County and the county commissioners with regard to the Breuer Tower demolition financing, the MedicalMartConventionCenter, and the 1/4% tax increase for what merely goes without restriction or earmarking to the general fund. Here's the whole entry so you, too, can begin to speak in the hip financial parlance of the people you elected or hired to know what's best for you.

Word of the Day for Saturday, September 8, 2007

fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:

1. (Law) Freely exchangeable
for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.

2. Interchangeable.

3. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Usually used in the plural.

People think this tax is for Social Security. But tax monies are really fungible. They get raided all the time.-- Eugene Ludwig, "Motivated to Work," interview by Kerry A. Dolan", Forbes, March 20, 2000

The setting is Ireland in the 1950's, but, a cynical reader might reflect, this sort of fiction is so common that the characters will be completely fungible.-- Susan Isaacs, "Three Little Girls From School", New York Times, December 30, 1990

Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies.-- Edward Craig (general editor), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Fungible comes from Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi (vice),
"to perform (in place of)."

Dictionary.com Entry and
Pronunciation for fungible

Yesterday's Word - Previous Words - Help

eWeek: Financial Fact and Friction

Financial Fact and Friction -- In line with the recent furor over slipshod mortgage-lending practices and the careless administration of what is for most people their largest single financial asset, their personal residence, here is a reminder from Eric Lundquist over at eWeek that nobody is held to a fiduciary standard in the confiscatory lending business, and nobody really knows where the money goes. If you weren't aware already, this will be an eye-opener, and from a technical as opposed to a financial perspective. Here's a sampling from Opinion: Skip the frictionless-economy ideas and stick with the customer:

Financial organizations have always been big computer purchasers. They are usually among the first to install the latest supercomputers and big storage servers to process and track the millions and millions of shares traded each day. In the last couple of years, computing attention has turned to "quants": quantitative analysts who contend they can model the entire financial market and would love to talk to you for hours about stochastic calculus.

Yet, despite all those quants and all that computing horsepower on Wall Street and elsewhere in the financial world, it is increasingly evident that no one really knows where the money goes, how it moves and how much the leveraged buyout firms really have in their wallets at the end of the day. Why is that? Wasn't all this computing purchasing supposed to result in a frictionless economy where the movement of money and other financial instruments slides seamlessly through the world's economy and everyone can sleep well at night knowing how much money is in the bank?

When I add up all those CNN tidbits and wild swings on Wall Street as quant-driven computer trading tries to track the untrackable, I have to conclude that all the computing horsepower has been aimed at making money move faster with little regard for trying to settle accounts at day's end.

A computer is an obedient device that will do exactly what you program. If your goal is to track the flow of money after it gets splintered into the world's financial markets, then that is what the computer will do. If your goal is to accelerate that money movement and not really be concerned about where the funds go after they leave your company, then you will get what we have: a lot of panicked investors and corporate managers unable to say where the money has gone.

Forget about the frictionless economy and let's count on building some friction based on accountability and concern for customers who want to know where the money went.

officer z had the freedom to do as he pleased

Authorities detail drug case against Patrolman Zvonko Sarlog - cleveland.com -- Here's a story, at the link, about a young guy who only wanted to be known as "z" and who ran his own game, in our back yards and our alleys over here in the second police district, with impunity, perhaps with immunity. The only other parallel would be the banks and the mortgage lenders, and their TPAs. They all do as they please, unsupervised and unchallenged, and get away with stripping the equity and the value from our communities. It's time for a financial payback, on top of the usual incarceration.

This z character was actually sort of mock-comical. I remember his showing up driving his police cruiser down our narrow driveway to check on the health and welfare of a well-known neighborhood sociopath, a lady who's been dodging laws and decorum since her husband died in 1990; he tried to deputize me as one of his little helpers in keeping an eye on "suspicious activity;" he assumed I was a simpleton who wanted to cozy up to police saviors. He was actually probably keeping an eye on competing, low-grade criminal enterprise.

He should have realized that the most suspicious activity I had seen lately was a police car driving down that driveway to visit Miss Judy. The rest of them parked on the street and usually advanced in pairs, tactically. He was like a visiting relative.

one of the most pernicious ideas ever

Foreclosure task force: Save neighborhoods, not scattered properties - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer -- A while back, there was a rumor out that Tim Hagan was going to push for legislation so that the banks would be bailed out of their foreclosure mess in a scheme such as this: The foreclosed properties would be condemned and demolished, new money would be let out to developers, new properties would be built, and new mortgages would be let out. They might call this a public-private partnership. Well, read the article at the link. It's here. Banks, developers, unions, and developers seem to benefit, as we waste our way into oblivion.

This is one of the most destructive, indecent, proposals ever floated. It feeds off all of us and the capital and equity we've built in our communities for years. It strips us of what makes us unique in the first place. It destroys properties that would otherwise be used were it not for the gangsterism of unregulated lending interests who set aside their fiduciary responsibility to the public, and were allowed to do so. It replaces the intrinsically valuable and economical with what's basically low-value yet incredibly overpriced. It's a short-term fix at best, designed to cover up the fact that our

Here again, our elected government employees are showing they can forestall a reckoning day by going along for a while with the monied interests, as they continue to compromise the best interests of the public. They're only putting off the reckoning, not avoiding it, and making the final reckoning so much worse, so much more painful for each and every one of us, the new indentured servants who used to be the middle class.

new perspective on CPAC

I was talking to an academic last night at Edgewater Park about Tom Schorgl and the payback price for Issue 18, and found out there is a new interpretation of the acronym CPAC around town lately: Commissioners' Political Action Committee.

good news from the big lunatic tent in the middle

Cleveland Equanimous Philosopher: Top Ten Reasons Why I'm A Lunatic Who Doesn't Want Cleveland to Move Forward -- Great points here from Roger B. I guess we're all bozos on this bus, the lunatic fringe becoming mainstream. They've driven us crazy, and it's time to get our vote back, and then to get our money back.

Make sure you click through. The 10 points should be required reading for all who value a straight-up dialogue. Roger's keeping us all on task and sorting through the dross and the disinformation. We're up against progagandists.

One thing I want to find out is who is orchestrating the lies and the cheap-shot anonymous flyers, and who is renting the planes with the banners, and who's paying for it all? Even though it's working to our benefit in galvanizing the public, I still want to find out.

Yesterday, people paid the admission to get into the county fair, found us at our stall in building 20, signed the ballot, and left for their regularly scheduled Sunday.

Our county commissioners' stall at the fair was empty, according to intelligence brought back our scouts.

how much have we given away already?

We were just down at Jacobs Field to collect some signatures for the PIOTB petition, and coming out of The Winking Lizard, we saw an airplane circling overhead trailing a banner telling the masses below not to sign the petitions. That made us feel good. I just wish I knew how much the plane and the banner cost, and who paid for it. I like to know who's getting nervous, and who has what at stake.

At the ballfield complex, the staff was fully briefed to escort us off the property where our circulators had performed quite well previously, on other days. We asked where the public property began, and it turns out that we have given over a lot of what used to be public streets and sidewalks to a private entity. I'll bet very few people know that. I certainly didn't.

When the dust settles on this petition drive, I want to find out who owns what down around the ballfield, who has rights where, how many city streets and sidewalks we have handed over to private interests, and how we can go about getting our property back and settling up the score. At first glance, it seems that public property has been converted to private use covertly, not even with a bang, or a whimper.

our adolescent bombast has a life of its own

In the ’60s, a Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out in Letters - New York Times -- This is an interesting look at the turbulent times of the college scene in the late '60s and what young people did before Facebook. I'd imagine little of my own turgid prose survives, and the world's probably better off for that.

What I do recall, and what this NYT piece reminds me about, is that these were exciting times, years when change accelerated as though in a cyclotron, finally coming to a jarring halt by running head-on into the wall that we now call The Great Society. But, we only know this now, as we look into the rear-view mirror, from the ambulance.

Back then, we thought that we could take over and work through government to solve all of our society's ills. So did Hilary. Most of us now think differently.

PLJ articulates the points, for us, and for the other two

Medical Mart is a great idea, but the sales tax is the wrong way to pay for it - cleveland.com -- Jeff Buster over at RealNEO alerted me to this intelligent opinion-piece by Peter Lawson Jones. He certainly is the articulate one of the county-commissioner trio, and rational, too. The way he's phrasing it is a good way to begin the community dialogue. He's a uniter, not a divider. He's leading. Here's an excerpt:

Some assert that immediately raising the sales tax is the only viable Medical Mart/Convention Center funding option because "time is of the essence" and my proposal is too complex. I am not urging procrastination. Every element of my plan could be finalized by November. Is there reason to believe that, if the financing package were not in place until then, the potential developer's professed ardor for locating the complex here would lessen?

And what is so intricate about a funding package that includes reasonable private-sector support and public resources that are both available to the county and eminently equitable?

Like so many civic leaders and citizens, I sing the praises of the proposed Medical Mart/Convention Center. The crafting of a plan that most fairly finances it need not be sacrificed in our efforts to realize the project's promise. The proposed sales tax increase must be our last, not first, resort.

going tactical

Here's an email I am in the process of sending out today to get people downtown tomorrow. This is the start of something bigger than just us, bigger than Cleveland, bigger than Ohio, and it bodes well for all of us. Let's make it happen:

Dear Tim--

We're going tactical on the issue of the sales tax. On July 12th at noon downtown in the Cleveland Public Library auditorium, Cool Cleveland and MeetTheBloggers are conducting a genuine public forum, where everybody gets a chance. Here's Thomas Mulready's commentary from the CoolCleveland newsletter just out this morning:

Commune. Communicate. Community. These are Cleveland's buzz words this week. With the critical issue of a convention center and medical mart in play because of a proposed county tax increase, we felt that the legal minimum two public sessions didn't give the community enough of an opportunity to discuss, raise questions and pose issues. So we're hosting our own Forum this Thu 7/12, increasing public debate by 50%, and you're invited to join us . . . keep the flow of communication open. By the way, the antonym of "communicate" is "hush up," "keep secret," or "suppress." We don't think that's very Cleveland-like, do you? --Thomas Mulready

Here are more details of the event and the instructions for registering (even though it's free, only a few hundred of you can fit)--

Cuyahoga County sales tax for convention center & medical mart-- Join your Cool Cleveland colleagues at this free and open Community Forum on July 12, 2007 from noon to 1:30PM at the Cleveland Public Library, 325 Superior Avenue N.E. in Downtown Cleveland, in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium.
While a number of subject matter experts will be invited to invited to be in the audience as resources in the fields of government, economic development and convention centers, this Community Forum is designed to allow the public to ask questions and raise issues about the 1/4% sales tax recently proposed by the Cuyahoga County Commissioners to raise money for a yet-to-be-determined convention center and attached medical mart. There will be no panels, no presentations and no speakers. After a brief outline of the issue, the public will be invited to step up to the microphones and raise questions and issues, which will be transcribed and then posted to http://www.CoolCleveland.com, http://www.BrewedFreshDaily.com and the http://www.MeetTheBloggers.net network of top regional blog sites.

To attend, please register by clicking here: http://www.coolcleveland.com/forums/071407/index.php

To post your comment or question in advance, or if you are unable to attend, please click here: http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2007/07/03/coolclevelandcombfdmtbyoucool-community-forums/

A copy of the press release is available for download as a PDF here: http://www.coolcleveland.com/doc/SalesTaxForumAnnouncement.pdf


The event appears on Upcoming.org here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/215136/

Gloria gives background and perspective to the event in two blog posts:

http://www.gloriaferris.net/2007/07/just-in-time-for-thursday/

http://www.gloriaferris.net/2007/07/and-here-is-what-i-want-to-know/

There's a lot going on. This is becoming huge. It's no longer just about Cleveland; the whole county and the region are about to take the shot, unless we take our government and our money back.

We hope to see you there at noon tomorrow. Feel free to share this email, tactically.

Tim Ferris